


Insurance in the Era of Hawkmoth

by CaughtFeelings



Series: Normal People, Normal Lives [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Chloé Bourgeois Being Chloé Bourgeois, Crack, Discworld References, Fox Alya Césaire | Rena Rouge, Gen, Lila Rossi Lies, Mentioned Nathalie Sancoeur, Minor Plagg/Tikki, Miraculous Holder Chloé Bourgeois, Protective Plagg (Miraculous Ladybug), Repo: The Genetic Opera, Supportive Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug), Tikki Is So Done (Miraculous Ladybug), Trigun - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21896002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaughtFeelings/pseuds/CaughtFeelings
Summary: There's a lot of property damage happening in Paris right now, most of it Akuma-related, and Parisians are just trying to make the best of it.
Relationships: André Bourgeois & Chloé Bourgeois, Plagg & Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug)
Series: Normal People, Normal Lives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791940
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73





	Insurance in the Era of Hawkmoth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writer_slk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_slk/gifts).



“So you’re saying,” said the voice on the phone, with a thoughtful pause, “is if it’s Destroyed, you’ll pay us?”

Something about that made Twoflower nervous.

“Well, it’s not really that simple,” he ventured, “or people would go around destroying things immediately after they buy the insurance policies.”

He paused for a moment, to accommodate his caller’s coughing fit, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard the caller’s wife say “ _of course, that wouldn’t be_ **_ethical_** ” in the background.

The caller must have passed the phone to his wife, because she spoke into the receiver next, in a voice that was sugar-sweet and put Twoflower at ease. “So, how does it actually work?” she asked.

“Well, it’s actually more like a bet,” Twoflower said, trying to reduce the concept of insurance to something that the callers would understand. “You start with property that you own. You can’t take out an insurance policy against the Eiffel Tower unless you own it! Then you pay an amount we agree on, every so often. Typically, it’s monthly, but there’s some flexibility on that, I’ve seen quarterly or annually, too. If it gets destroyed by accident- doing it on purpose isn’t allowed!- you win the bet and the company pays you an amount we agree on before the policy is bought. And then every month, or so on, we make the same bet again.”

The male caller hummed. “So, what happens I win the bet this month, and the thing gets _accidentally_ Destroyed, and I take this money that is worth more than the value of the thing getting catacly- _DESTROYED_ , and fix it? Do I get to make the bet again next month?”

Twoflower frowned thoughtfully, balancing the pen he was using to take notes on his lip. “Well,” he said, “we usually adjust the numbers. There’s a higher risk involved now, you see. You pay a lot more to gamble again the next month, and you get a lot less money if the property is destroyed. And the money you have to pay to bet is a lot more, for a long time after.”

 _“That’s_ **_fair_** _,”_ said the female caller to her husband. _“Don’t you think that’s_ **_fair_** _? And where are you even going to get another villa in the first place? I’m certainly not helping.”_

“ _Look, my boy doesn’t get access to his trust fund until he turns 18, and I’m not letting him stay in that house that long, it’s suffocating him. You’re Creation, not me, finding Creative solutions isn't in my nature_ ,” he grumbled to her, then spoke into the phone. “Okay. Let’s just start with a small bet this month. What can I get with an ancient Egyptian gold dinar?”

 _“Dinar?”_ asked the wife, in the background.

“Well, let’s see,” Twoflower said, politely not hearing the domestic grumbles that weren’t his business. He tucked his pen behind his ear and took out his favorite calculator. “Let’s convert gold dinar- can I assume from ballpark 500 BCE?- to Rhinu, that’s the local currency here, then adjust for inflation, with standard interest rates over 2,500 years, then convert to Euros, offsetting residential property of the square footage you mentioned, at Versailles, that’s a very nice address, and assume standard risk for residential property…”

Twoflower pressed the equals sign on his calculator, and then stared at the sum.

“I’m sorry,” he said, a little faint, “I think I forgot a decimal place somewhere.”

“Take your time,” the wife said encouragingly. “We don’t want you to make any commitments you’re uncomfortable with.”

The numbers were the same on the second try, and the third.

“That would be a very nice policy,” he said. _And a very nice commission for myself, indeed. Maybe I can actually take that vacation._ “Now, I must repeat, I would not be able to offer this much if the property were to require more than one appraisal.”

When he told them the number, the callers took a moment in silence.

“One policy should be enough,” the wife said, politely. “Where should we sign?”

* * *

“Thank you so much for agreeing to come out and help,” Meryl Strife told her friend and coworker Milly Thompson, lugging her fourth suitcase into the tiny apartment they would be sharing for the duration of their assignment. The luggage had been a gift after the dust in No Man’s Land had settled, specifically designed for each suitcase to be stored inside the next like traveler’s matryoshka dolls to maximize storage capacity but minimize the space required to store the cases themselves when not in use, and when Meryl had given them to Milly, they had been elegant, all clean lines and smooth surfaces. Now, however, they were lumpy and bulging with something Meryl profoundly hoped was not heavy artillery. “We’re a long way from home and I don’t know how long this assignment will take.”

“You know I’m always happy to help,” Milly said, opening the smallest suitcase, to retrieve a box of doughnuts, a carafe of coffee, placemats, coffee cups, cream, sugar, and a stowaway black cat with implausibly large, green eyes. The cat yowled and darted under Meryl’s bed. Meryl had Questions about just how sanitary the doughnuts would be after being cooped up with a cat since Home Office, but the carafe, at least, had been sealed. “But you seem to think this could take a while. Paris is already filing a suspicious amount of claims compared to other cities in this area; what’s the bigger story you’re not telling Home Office?”

Meryl hated leaving suitcases in the truck waiting downstairs, but she sat heavily, poured herself a mug of coffee, and drank deeply. “ _Hawkmoth,"_ she said, her voice full of loathing. “I have had it up to here with Hawkmoth and his shenanigans.”

Milly settled in across from her friend, poured herself a mug of coffee as well, and made small “tsch, tsch, tsch,” noises to the cat, rubbing her fingers together to call him to her. Meryl’s story was going to take a while.

“Just keeping track of what’s currently destroyed or turned into ice cream or coal or glitter or erased from time is enough of a logistics migraine,” Meryl muttered darkly. “And there’s no reason this can’t be subcontracted to a local! I offered the job to the Ladyblogger, who’s on site at every Akuma attack anyway, and there’s a generous stipend available just to take informational photos and notes together with her more fan-oriented ones. Of course Home Office can’t just accept the Ladyblog articles as documentation, especially with an illusionist among the heroes! It made the Ladyblogger really upset, though. I don’t think the Ladyblog knows how to respond to Rena Rouge casting an illusion and telling a different story than what’s actually happening. So now we’re both going to every battle, and duplicating work, and sometimes I get the impression she’s actively interfering to stop me from stealing her scoop. Splitting the work between you and me means that no one person has to be at every battle, and it also increases our chances of seeing what the Ladyblogger wants to hide from us. Honestly, we probably need the entire department here, but that’s impractical.”

“Can’t you just wait until after the battle ends?” Milly asked, and looked down to the black cat, who had bumped his head against her hand with a small “brrt!” She smiled at him, and allowed him to sniff her hand.

Meryl was already pouring herself another mug of coffee. “No,” she sighed. “Because the lead hero- Ladybug- has a spell that puts it all right again.”

“Well, that’s great news!” Milly said, clapping her hands together. The black cat, offended that she had taken her hand away, periscoped up, batting her hand with his paw until she brought it back down to scritch him behind his ears. “That’s very convenient; I wish that all of our hotspots had a Ladybug. You can let her work, and only process the claims of non-Hawkmoth property damage. This work streamlines itself.”

Meryl was staring murder at her coffee cup. “ _Under ordinary circumstances,_ ” she seethed. “But _Twoflower_ wanted a little extra cash for his vacation, and smelled commissions. So he got sloppy. I can’t even talk to him about it, he went on vacation and dropped off the edge of the planet. Every single policy with his fingerprints on it in Paris says _damaged_ , not damaged _permanently_.”

The color drained from Milly’s face. “ _Oh_ ,” she said weakly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Meryl said. “So, now, any time there’s an Akuma battle, anyone can say anything happened, and if we aren’t on site to document otherwise in realtime, “the magic ladybugs fixed it” before we can confirm or deny after the fact. There’s one family in particular, the Rossis, that are absolutely cleaning us out, but the Sancoeurs aren’t far behind; they both tend to take pictures of things out of immediate sight of the battles but could feasibly have been damaged by the Akumas, so we have to choose to either watch the heroes and Akumas where most of the claims will be coming from, or watch the hidden nooks and crannies nearby where the high rollers are hiding. And Hawkmoth is so thoroughly beyond the realm of logic- not to mention Rena Rouge, who I mentioned earlier- that we need to fully document every fight and both what happened and what didn’t happen, because Corporate will pay through the nose for any detail we miss.”

The black cat was in Milly’s lap now, his body a constant purr as he stretched out on his back, exposing a fluffy belly, as if inviting her to pet it. She settled, for now, on petting his cheeks from whisker base to jawline. “So,” she mused, “we take pictures, and interview people, and gather as much data from the ground as possible. But this is too big of a project for even two of us, let alone one. Your reports were coming in later and later, you’re falling behind, and we only have so much time to investigate claims before Corporate just has to pay them out. Why don’t we just send the evidence in, and have someone at Home Office actually write the reports?”

Meryl set down her mug of coffee, and met Milly’s eyes. “It’s complicated,” she said, quietly. “The entire project goes away, bundled up and tied neatly with string, and locked away in a filing cabinet, if Home Office connects the dots of all these individual Akumas and deduces Hawkmoth. Half of the work I’ve done so far is just scrubbing Hawkmoth from the official reports I’m sending in, and trusting that the reports being submitted by the policyholders aren’t getting aggregated. Sooner or later, someone notices every single policyholder mentions Hawkmoth, the way that I noticed that every policy was written by Twoflower, and declares Akumatization an Act of God. Cataclysm is already mostly there, and Chat Noir is mostly attacking harmless, uninsured things like snowglobes, that villa in Versailles notwithstanding.”

“And the Eiffel tower,” Milly supplied, helpfully.

“Chat Noir wasn’t on site for that one and you can’t prove it was a Cataclysm,” Meryl said, gripping her mug tightly enough for the surface of the coffee to ripple.

“Fine,” Milly said, smiling. “A suspicious coincidence, then.”

Meryl sighed. “But think about it. Hawkmoth can send out an Akuma that can spawn a volcano so powerful, it pushes Earth farther away from the Sun, in flagrant disregard for the laws of Physics,” she said, almost plaintively. “After a certain point, the Act of God decree is inevitable, a cost saving measure for Corporate to stop paying out the nose before they’re bankrupted by a single city. Chat Noir is a hero and a good kid, and if we declare Cataclysm an Act of God, he goes on record to report that it’s not, he’s sorry, and he’ll try to be more careful. Hawkmoth, though? From what I know about Hawkmoth, the man already considers himself a god. Can you imagine how much more dangerous he gets if it’s official?”

* * *

“If you do not go away this instant, I’m going to call the police!” Mayor Bourgeois shouted to Nathan Wallace, drawing himself up to his full volume like a game bird fluffing its feathers when facing down a predator it cannot outrun. “I’ll have you for trespassing!”

Nathan sighed. This conversation would not be easy, and he would prefer for it to be settled as quietly as possible. “Sir,” he said, putting more respect and deference into the title than he really felt belonged there, “you are entitled to contact police or an attorney if you prefer, but given the nature of my visit, I really do think most people would prefer it be resolved privately.”

“How dare you!” Mayor Bourgeois continued. “I will pay your company the amount I paid last month, on time, how dare they send you with this invoice several thousand times more expensive than usual, this is a robbery and I’ll have you sent to prison for this-”

Nathan didn’t have a great customer service persona, and there was only so far compassion would take him.

“I’m not sure about the finer details about the French justice system,” he said, as quietly as he could to be heard above Mayor Bourgeois’s tirade, “but from where I stand, it may be you who is in danger of going to prison. Or, at the very least, being profoundly embarrassed next election cycle. Will you at least hear me out?”

The words died in Mayor Bourgeois’s throat. He didn’t seem to notice- his mouth continued working for a solid minute after it stopped making noise- but eventually, he reached a resolution. “Come with me,” he said, and turned towards the office suites of Le Grand Paris.

Nathan assessed his surroundings as he followed the Mayor and proprietor of the hotel. Marble. Silk. Technology, and from what he could tell, expensive stuff. Gold. He only had his basic repo kit with him today, not the more extensive one, but from the unassisted eye, it looked like Mayor Bourgeois had literally run out of ideas with what to do with all of his money and started coating everything with layers of 24 karat gold.

The walk had effectively killed any sympathy Nathan had for when Mayor Bourgeois closed the solid mahogany door behind them, and walked over to his desk to announce that he was broke.

Nathan took a minute for that to sink in.

“You can’t be,” he said, when it was clear it wasn’t a joke. “You’re the Mayor. You own possibly one of the most lavish buildings in an international city. I’m very familiar with the appraised value of Le Grand Paris, you’ve been declaring it on every application.”

“Le Grand Paris is worth several dozen fortunes,” Mayor Bourgeois agreed. “But it’s not liquid. I don’t have the cash.”

“There’s an offshore bank account somewhere,” Nathan suggested. “There’s a charitable foundation. There’s stocks.”

“No,” Mayor Bourgeois said, defeated. “There’s not. Not any of them.”

Nathan sighed, steepling his hands. “So what have you been doing with all the payouts?”

Mayor Bourgeois gestured to the hotel around them. “Le Grand Paris isn’t state of the art,” he said. “Its value comes from being a luxury hotel. In order to attract guests like Prince Ali or Jagged Stone, it has to be luxurious. And that means something different to every guest. Sometimes that means serving them breakfast on the back of a polar bear, which means paying the zoo to borrow their polar bear, and paying the zookeeper to make sure the polar bear won’t maul the guests, and paying the butler to accommodate this kind of extreme request with professionalism. And then sometimes the zookeeper turns into a panther and all the animals at the zoo are released to rampage throughout the city and you have to bring in a pony instead. Making money costs an excessive amount of money, and we’re actually turning only a very modest profit.”

“You’re operating at a loss, then, actually,” Nathan insisted. “You can’t use insurance payouts to balance your books, and your file indicates Le Grand Paris has sustained extensive damage and is insured to the hilt. You haven’t had to pay to repair any of the damage, either, Ladybug fixes it for you at no cost. You should be able to return the insurance paid-outs quietly and forget this ever happened.”

“But why should I?!” Mayor Bourgeois exclaimed, but was careful not to shout it. “My policy specifically outlines damage done, not damage sustained! Those women even come by and take pictures every time, those were not fraudulent claims!”

Nathan took out his phone, and pulled up Instagram. “This is your daughter?”

“My pride and joy,” Mayor Bourgeois responded. “She’s one of the Heroes of Paris, you know. She’ll back me up, this invoice is unfair.”

Nathan sighed. “And in [this post](https://www.instagram.com/p/B2kXTo3pLIC/?hl=en), she references a _kwami_. Specifically, that Kwamis are what power the Miraculouses. Our claims department have researched Kwamis throughout history, and determined that they can be interpreted as living manifestations of abstractions- specifically, Pollen, Chloé's Kwami, is Domination personified.”

“I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” Mayor Bourgeois said. “My Chloé has done nothing wrong, ever, in her life, and I love her.”

“But you must agree, that if Queen Bee’s Miraculous is powered by a Kwami, it is extremely likely that Hawkmoth’s is, as well?”

“I am not responsible for Hawkmoth or anything he does,” Mayor Bourgeois insisted.

“No,” Nathan said, trying to stay reasonable, “but there’s a solid case to be made that Kwamis, living manifestations of abstractions, are gods- and substantial documentation throughout art history reinforces this argument. This is important because these insurance policies specifically exclude acts of gods. If Hawkmoth’s Kwami is a god, every single paid out on damage sustained by Le Grand Paris was made in error. Now, timely filing prevents us from recouping every paid-out, but we would be within our rights to recoup the ones from the past six months.”

Mayor Bourgeois sighed, and accepted the invoice. Nathan did not breathe a literal sigh of relief- a lot of his job was successful intimidation checks- but the development was promising.

“All I want to do,” he said, “is provide the best life possible for my wife and daughter.”

That spoke to Nathan’s heart. “I know that feeling,” he said. “I would do anything for my wife and my Shilo, too. Let’s try to resolve this as quietly and with as little fuss as possible.”

Behind him, the mahogany door slammed open.

“DADDY,” Chloé demanded, “Did you know that the latest model of mePhone is a slightly different shape than the one that came out a month and a half ago?!? Of course you didn’t, you’re the mayor, you’re not cool at all. Well. The diamond encrusted phone case you just got for me is garbage now, it’s not going to fit the new one, so I threw it in the Seine, and then I thought about it, and the phone itself is garbage, too, so I threw that right in with it. I need a new one. And I need the case itself to be solid 24 karat gold, the last one was clearly 18 karat and it ruined my perfectly manicured nails. I need it, and I need it _now_. What kind of daddy are you, if you can’t give me what I want?!”

“Sweetie pie, it’s not the best time-” Mayor Bourgeois began, weakly.

“How am I supposed to know what time it is, with my phone at the bottom of the Seine? Get me a new one! Now!” she shouted, slamming the door on the way out.

Nathan turned from the door, to smile politely back at Mayor Bourgeois.

“We can do this on a payment plan, if you prefer,” he said, mildly. “The interest rate is very approachable.”

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas to [Writer_Slk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_slk/pseuds/writer_slk), who has been putting an absurd amount of time and love into helping me with my WIPs. I'm still going to try to spring the traps in Home Owlone by Christmas, but this is for you.
> 
> Thank you to [Djaeka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djaeka/pseuds/Djaeka) and [Reyemile](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511747) for their beta work for this story!


End file.
